Talking quotes
5.1K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
Explore further
Browse quotes that often appear alongside talking — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
Quote collection
Follow a thought to its author, or read the full quote page.
"But why,... if you have a serious comment to make on the real life of men, must you do it by talking about a phantasmagoric never-never land of your own? Because, I take it, one of the main things the author wants to say is that the real life of men is of that mythical and heroic quality."
"I don't want you folks to do a lot of talking. Just shut up and get out of the way."
"I've never been noticeably reticent about talking on subjects about which I know nothing."
"meditation vs prayer = listening vs talking"
"And we certainly don't have full conversations on cellphones. You know? Usually the reception is so bad, but it's only bad on your side. The person talking to you has no clue. They're just rambling on and on. You've got your finger jammed in your ear, you're shushing people on the streets. You're ducked behind a dumpster so you can hear about your friend's new hair cut. What about the bangs are they shorter?! Are the bangs shorter?! The bangs!"
"I've never been very good talking about myself."
"I avoid talking about the way I work. But in avoiding it I seem only to have encouraged people to focus their fantasies about me in an ever more fantastical way on the details that are not at all at the centre of the work."
"The West is boring itself to death! And talking itself to death!"
"It all sounds rather naive and sentimental to be talking about children laughing and dancing and singing together when we all know perfectly well that what children do in real life is snarl and take drugs."
"All them 5s need to listen when the 10 is talking"
"The ordinary Nigerians have lived as neighbors down the millennia. I was talking about the British who came and merged a whole number of mini states and big states into one unit. But those people were always there, and they always managed to live side by side with their neighbours. So they were not owned or run by one kingdom. It was not practically impossible for these people when they have different languages and religions to be neighbors. So it is that habit of neighbourliness which is destroyed and put under great strain again and again when you have things like massacres."
"I love talking about Kennedy assassination...a great archetypal example of how totalitarian government...sorry, wrong meeting."
"To look at life without words is not to lose the ability to form words- to think, remember, and plan. To be silent is not to lose your tongue. On the contrary, it is only through silence that one can discover something new to talk about. One who talked incessantly, without stopping to look and listen, would repeat himself ad nauseam. It is the same with thinking, which is really silent talking. It is not, by itself, open to the discovery of anything new, for its only novelties are simply arrangements of old words and ideas."
"I think it was when I ran into Kerouac and Burroughs - when I was 17 - that I realized I was talking through an empty skull... I wasn't thinking my own thoughts or saying my own thoughts."
"Food is so personal - I mean someone is talking to you when people are cooking for you. I like to hear an identifiable voice."
"Theres no hope, none, of ever talking about it without pissing somebody, if not everybody, off...By the end of this hour I will be seen by many as a terrorist sympathizer, a Zionist tool. A self-hating Jew, an apologist for American imperialism, an orientalist, socialist, fascist, CIA agent, and worse."
"Netflix represents, as well as all the streaming services, something that I've been talking about being so important to inclusive voices around films."
"In the confusion we stay with each other, happy to be together, speaking without uttering a single word."
"I've always been making original music. I think that when I sat down with Losing Focus, I approached it different. I had a clearer understanding of who I was talking to, because I was able to go out and tour and see them right in front of me. I wanted to speak to them and speak about this lifestyle."
"When people talk of atoms obeying fixed laws, they are either ascribing some kind of intelligence and free will to atoms or they are talking nonsense. There is no obedience unless there is at any rate a potentiality of disobeying."
